The American Diabetes Association has recognized collaborative goal setting between patients and their clinicians as a critical component of high quality diabetes care. Despite this recommendation, and theoretical support as well as empirical evidence of the benefits of collaborative goal setting, little is known about what constitutes collaborative goal setting from perspective of patients. The focus of the proposed dissertation research is to define collaborative goal setting from the patient's perspective and develop a patient-reported measure for assessing collaborative goal setting within the clinical setting. Both qualitative and quantitative methods will be used to develop the measure. The specific aims of the study are to (1) generate a list of survey items for possible inclusion in a measure of collaborative goal setting, using results from patient focus groups and input from an expert panel, and (2) administer the collaborative goal setting measure to a diverse sample of patients with diabetes and test the psychometric properties of the measure. Qualitative analyses of patient focus group results combined with input from an expert panel will identify the relevant components of collaborative goal setting and serve as the basis for the development of survey items for possible inclusion in the measure. A structured survey will then be administered to a sample of 400 patients with diabetes. Survey responses will be used to test the psychometric properties of the collaborative goal setting measure while also elucidating the relationship between collaborative goal setting and self-management skills. Structural equation modeling will be used to estimate the predictive validity coefficients. Results from the proposed study will provide a foundation upon which to measure the components of collaborative goal setting from the perspective of patients as well as foster its use in the clinical setting.